Indigenous Activists Call for Hate Crime Prosecution in Española Shooting

Indigenous groups: Activist’s shooting was a hate crime

Artist, climate activist and shooting victim Jacob Johns (Hopi and Akimel O’odham) “is currently fighting for his life in an Albuquerque hospital,” supporters say. “Due to fluid accumulation in the area where his spleen was previously located he will likely need more surgery, but due to his physical condition it is not certain when the surgery can take place.” Indigenous groups and supporters marked yesterday’s Indigenous Peoples Day with an update on Johns’ condition and a call for “unity and justice” following the Sept. 28 shooting at a protest over a Juan de Oñate statue in Española that left Johns injured. Police charged Ryan Martinez, 23, with attempted murder and aggravated assault in the shooting. Martinez donned a Trump-era Make America Great Again hat at the event and had been previously investigated by the FBI for threatening tweets he made about in 2020 about the Federal Reserve. “This is a hate crime,” Johns’ attorney John Day said yesterday in a statement. “It needs to be recognized and prosecuted as such. Jacob’s heroism in protecting the lives of innocent people, including children, is important in itself, but there’s a larger principle at stake here: we cannot afford to minimize or normalize targeting lawful, peaceful assembly of people with violent crime because they belong to a different group. It threatens anyone’s right to peaceably assemble or simply belong to a faith community. It should concern all people, whatever faith or community you belong to.” The news release refers to Martinez as a “self-identified QAnon believer,” “right-wing extremist” and “domestic terrorist” and further details the events leading up to and following the shooting, noting that were it not for Johns’ and other activists’ interventions, Martinez might have fired more shots. What happened to Johns “is part of the ongoing legacy of colonization and continued threat of white supremacist violence facing Indigenous Peoples across the country,” Janene Yazzie, Southwest regional director of NDN Collective said in a statement. “The shooting is another reminder that Indigenous Peoples literally risk their lives simply by gathering in prayer.”

Early voting begins

Early voting for the Nov. 7 local election begins today at the Santa Fe County Clerk’s office (100 Catron St.). Voters can cast ballots at the clerk’s office between 8 am and 5 pm Monday through Friday through Nov. 4 and on one Saturday: Nov. 4. Expanded Early Voting begins Oct. 21 at eight additional sites throughout the county from 11 am to 7 pm, Tuesdays through Fridays and Saturdays 10 am to 6 pm. Voters must request mail-in ballots no later than Oct. 24 here or call the clerk’s office at (505) 986-6280 to request an application. City voters will choose candidates in all four City Council races, along with ballot measures on a proposed excise tax for high-end real estate; lower signature requirements for referendum and initiatives; and specifying the composition and duties for the city’s Charter Commission, among other issues. Ballots will also include Santa Fe Public Schools Board of Education races; a Santa Fe Community College Board race; and various taxation and bond questions. Review what’s on the ballot overall here or download your specific ballot here. For those wanting some input, SFR’s endorsements publish tomorrow: Oct. 11. Catch up on SFR’s election coverage here.

Raven Chacon receives MacArthur grant

Albuquerque-based composer and artist Raven Chacon, 45, (Diné) last week followed up his 2022 Pulitzer Prize in composing by receiving one of 20 grants—frequently referred to as “genius” awards—from the MacArthur Foundation. The awards, which have no public nomination process, carry a no-strings-attached $800,000 award to “talented individuals who have shown extraordinary originality and dedication in their creative pursuits and a marked capacity for self-direction,” the foundation says. In a video accompanying his award page, Chacon describes noise as “another timber” but one that “contains a lot of information.” His work almost always begins, he says, “as some kind of score. And sometimes these scores are prompts for improvisation. Sometimes they’re more prompts for a composed piece of music. And sometimes they describe a situation of performance or a situation of moving through the room.” He makes his work “looking at the histories of different places the history of the United States,” he notes, and applying a lens of “what kind of ecological urgencies are there? What other encroachments from industry or others are happening?” with an eye toward finding ways, as “stewards of these lands,” to push back. “The 2023 MacArthur Fellows are applying individual creativity with global perspective, centering connections across generations and communities,” MacArthur Fellows Program Director Marlies Carruth says in a statement accompanying the awards announcement. “They forge stunning forms of artistic expression from ancestral and regional traditions, heighten our attention to the natural world, improve how we process massive flows of information for the common good, and deepen understanding of systems shaping our environment.”

ICYMI

Last Thursday, with little public warning, the City of Santa Fe reopened West Alameda Street, which has been closed since the end of March following the collapse of a culvert. “This project was much more than just repaving a road,” Mayor Alan Webber said in a statement. “This was an incredibly complex feat of structural and environmental engineering to rebuild the culvert system and bridge above to the highest safety standards, and to meet the future needs of the roadway when we embark on the larger W. Alameda Capital Improvement Project.” City officials held a private ceremony on the public road that they recorded and distributed after the fact, with a city spokeswoman telling the Santa Fe New Mexican officials didn’t want to bother neighbors with a larger event.

Ninth Judicial District Judge Judge Fred Van Soelen on Friday ruled in Democrats’ favor in the Republican-led lawsuit over redistricting, finding that while Democrat lawmakers had indeed participated in active attempts to “dilute the votes” of Republicans in the state’s 2nd Congressional District, their efforts did not constitute “egregious gerrymandering,” as outlined by the state Supreme Court in advance of the hearing using US Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan’s “three-part test,” from her dissenting opinion in 2019′s Rucho v. Common Cause. The state Republican Party said it intends to appeal the ruling to the state Supreme Court.

Also on Friday, Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham renewed executive orders regarding gun violence and substance abuse, and the health department updated the public health order therein. The public health order includes a new provision requiring the state Department of Public Safety to organize safe surrender events (aka “gun buy-backs”) in the Albuquerque, Española and Las Cruces within 30 days. “The fact of the matter is that New Mexicans are still being threatened, injured and killed by firearms. Just yesterday, two guns were found in the possession of students at an Albuquerque high school, and while thankfully no one was hurt, these incidents have profound psychological effects on our children,” the governor said in a statement. “The last four weeks have clearly demonstrated the impact we can have on violent crime when we work in better coordination, but the situation remains dire. We’re not letting up, and I’m continuing to make investments that drive down violence in our communities and protect our children.”

Listen up

Western Spur Award-winning author Johnny D. Boggs’ newest book, Longhorns East, tells the story of “the biggest, longest, wildest cattle drive in America’s history—from the heart of Texas to New York City.” Boggs joins Santa Fe author Will Grant (The Last Ride of the Pony Express: My 2,000-mile Horseback Journey into the Old West) for a discussion as part of this evening’s in-person 6 pm book event at Collected Works Bookstore (202 Galisteo St.), which also will be live-streamed on Zoom; register here.

The driver’s seat

Thrillist delves into the creative world of New Mexico’s female lowriders, opening the story at Santa Fe’s Hotel Chimayó, which showcases lowrider cars and culture, along with ferrying guests in a “sleek silver ‘64 Chevy Impala.” The car, Thrillist senior travel writer Vanita Salisbury notes, “isn’t by chance. This is the quintessential lowrider, a 3rd generation model both stretched out and swoopy with an X-type frame that easily lends itself to hydraulic modification. Think of a famous lowrider and you’re probably picturing a ‘64 Impala.” Salisbury tracks both Santa Fe’s own lowrider day’s origins: a 2016 proclamation from the late Mayor Javier Gonzales (here’s SFR’s video on lowrider culture from that year), as well as its longer roots extending to post World War II Southern California. “We have good ‘ol Route 66 to thank for bringing lowriders to Northern New Mexico,” Salisbury says, and she talks to some of the high-profile women in the lowrider ecosystem, including acclaimed sculptor Rose B. Simpson (Santa Clara pueblo). “I bought my first car when I was 12, drove myself to Driver’s Ed, and got my license at 14,” Simpson tells Thrillist. “My car was always breaking down because I was broke, but I wanted my freedom, so I worked construction [to] keep my car running and learned to fix it myself. I projected freedom, safety, my aesthetic, and my identity onto my vehicle from a very young age.” Hotel Chimayó's lowrider may be nameless, but Simpson’s is not: Simpson’s “stunning, non-lowrider 1985 Chevy El Camino, Maria,” led Salisbury to her for the story, but Simpson currently is creating her first low-rider: a ‘64 Buick.

Protecting Native American art

According to Bloomberg, Santa Fe “is awash in stores that sell Indigenous crafts, but fraud and exploitation are rife.” The city, the story attests, functions as “the retail epicenter of the Southwest’s Native-arts scene,” with Native-made products accounting for a large percentage of the state’s estimated $137 million annual revenue from arts and culture industries. “But of the Plaza’s hundred-odd shops purporting to sell such objects, ‘there are only a handful of stores I would confidently say are fair and honest in their dealings with artists,’” Bronwyn Fox, owner of Keshi: the Zuni Connection, tells Bloomberg. While the Indian Arts and Crafts Act (IACA) has made it illegal since 1935 to falsely promote art as made by Native Americans, enforcement, the story says, remains lax, with 400 complaints on average each year to the Interior Department’s Indian Arts and Crafts Board, but to date only “30 violations that amounted to civil action and only three that ended in jail time.” Native American artists face myriad challenges and, in some cases, ill treatment, depending on where they lie in the “hierarchy of the Indigenous Arts market,” the story notes. Artists whose work is illegally copied or misrepresented—and the story cites several instances—have little recourse. While Congress is working to update the IACA, many artists question how effective the amended law will be. “My dad always told me this craft is going to go on forever, but I’m frightened,” silversmith Ellouise Toya (Santo Domingo Pueblo) tells Bloomberg. “I tell my kids, ‘You have to get a good education, because all this is going to die out.’”

Free fall

The aspens are turning yellow; balloons fill the sky. Must be fall in New Mexico! The National Weather Service forecasts a mostly sunny day with a high temperature near 71 degrees and east wind 5 to 15 mph becoming west in the afternoon; look for scattered “sprinkles” after 3 pm.

Thanks for reading! The Word finds this Washington Post interactive life-expectancy story strangely mesmerizing.